ECG R-wave peaks marking with simultaneously recorded continuous blood pressure

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: ECG signal is relatively weak and vulnerable to various noise interferences, such as electromyography. There will be robustness problems when detecting the instantaneous heart rate independently. In some cases, multiple human physiologic parameters are monitored to help in heart rate detection. METHODS: In this paper, an algorithm that marks the R-wave peaks with the help of simultaneously recorded continuous blood pressure is proposed and tested on two databases. One database, called the challenge database, is provided by the PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2014, and the other is the MGH/MF waveform database. RESULTS: The final scores of the proposed algorithm are 97.3% for the challenge database and 96.6% for the MGH/MF waveform database. CONCLUSIONS: The experimental results show that this algorithm has high detection accuracy and a relatively strong robustness.